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Remove the ?> and <?php. They don't belong there since your goal isn't to stop the PHP interpreter and break out into text mode.

A few easy ways to write it:

PHP Code:

$var = "HTML code here
can be as long
or as short as you like
blah blah blah more html";

PHP Code:

$var = "HTML code here\ncan be as long\nor as short as you like\nblah blah blah more html";
//Note: The newline characters (\n) will only be correctly
// interpreted if this string is enclosed in double quotes,
// not single quotes

PHP Code:

$var = <<<EOD
HTML code here
can be as long
or as short as you like
blah blah blah more html
EOD;

Remove the ?> and <?php. They don't belong there since your goal isn't to stop the PHP interpreter and break out into text mode.

A few easy ways to write it:

PHP Code:

$var = "HTML code here
can be as long
or as short as you like
blah blah blah more html";

PHP Code:

$var = "HTML code here\ncan be as long\nor as short as you like\nblah blah blah more html";
//Note: The newline characters (\n) will only be correctly
// interpreted if this string is enclosed in double quotes,
// not single quotes

PHP Code:

$var = <<<EOD
HTML code here
can be as long
or as short as you like
blah blah blah more html
EOD;

hmmm. What I was going to say was
"You know what, Nevermind, I was asking because I wanted a way to make a template page that I would call using the include function, yet that I could still Visually edit with software like frontpage. The vairables as such do allow me to edit using the design view, however once in the preview the varible blocks out anything that was attached to it. "

But now, I'll add on that I don't want to use the double quotes so that I can avoid having to escape all the " in the code, however, i'm intriged by the EOD thing, and I can't seem to make it work, do I need to escape anything.... I'm trying this right now...

It's called heredoc syntax, and it only works exactly as I gave it. Again, you don't want to break out of PHP, since this is PHP code, so get rid of the ?> and <?php. Second, the EOD; line (which can be any identifier, as long as it matches what you put after the <<< to start it) must be flush with the start of the line -- there can't be any characters or whitespace before it.

Everything between is interpreted virtually the same as if it were enclosed in double quotes, minus having to escape double quotes: variables within the string are interpreted and replaced with their values.